Sora and I were at Sakura-Con this weekend. First anime con I've been to in quite some time, actually!

I'll have pictures up sometime (including a couple Prince of the Cosmos pictures, and the best Ivy cosplayer I've ever seen). Meanwhile, highlights:

* Breaking in my new Munchkin and Ninja Burger sets in the tabletop gaming room. Munchkin was the closest game I've ever played - we had five players, all at level 9, before Sora got busted down to level 6, and the next player won because we'd used all our cards defeating Sora. Ninja Burger, we tried to play with seven players, and it just didn't work. Game took too long, and the victory condition was 70 Honor for the franchise. Two hours later, we had gotten from 42 to the mid 50s, and decided to call it a game.

* Nifty AMVs, including catching probably the last third of AMV Hell 3. Need to download all three of those, I think. This may or may not have been Sora's first exposure to AMVs, too, but we both enjoyed them immensely.

* Drawing in the "Creation Station", which had (among other things) a set of Copic markers to try out. I drew and colored two pictures with the Copic pens and markers, and I was extremely pleased with how they turned out. So, I bought a set - the "Ciao" set, which really amounts to a starter set. But the price for 72 markers was $216 instead of $300 for the Sketch or regular sets (normally $284 and $428, respectively), and the color range is great. They also gave me a free how-to book about coloring techniques. I'm really looking forward to giving them a workout and learning how to color with them. (A woman at the booth showed me some interesting techniques for gradients and mottling using not only the colorless blender pen but also a custom accessory - a little travel hair spray bottle filled with rubbing alcohol.)

* Several highly amusing panels about adult content in anime. In particular, one panel illustrated the difference between how hentai is treated and marketed in Japan vs. the US with a video clip of two characters talking. The audio was in English, but the original Japanese dialogue was translated and subtitled. The result was a horrible bit of "I want to fuck you" dialogue on the audio track, with a far gentler, more "romantic" dialogue in the subtitles. Hilarious.

* Crepes! There's a crepe place outside the convention center, staffed by (among other people) an astoundingly sweet (and rather cute) young lady with a hint of a French accent. Sora and I both remarked on the fact that she seemed genuinely happy to see us come back for more crepes the next day.

* Other purchases: a few manga books (including, on Sora's part, the entire 5-volume run of the Utena manga), the Excel Saga box set (woot!), and a few of those random-box figures. (I ended up with Michelle from ROD TV, Spike from Bebop, and some random Gung-Ho Gun from Trigun.)

So that was basically our whole weekend, though we also spent some of Sunday evening getting some stuff set up in Sora's apartment, including getting the maintenance guy to install the blinds. A necessary item, because while her apartment looks over Puget Sound to the Olympic Mountains (so gorgeous!), that entails facing west directly into any sunsets that happen to be occurring at the time.

Anyway, I forgot to mention last weekend in Vancouver here. After helping xaandria clean out her room, we drove up to Vancouver, arriving around 10:30. The next morning, we got breakfast at Tim Horton's, as well as lunch, to take to Stanley Park for a picnic-type thing. We didn't stay there long, though, because the weather was rather chilly. Still beautiful, though. We drove around the entirety of Stanley Park, and then headed to the Telus World of Science. Science museums are awesome. After frolicking about like little children for three or four hours, we grabbed dinner and then went to the hockey game. Detroit Red Wings vs. Vancouver Canucks. The Wings won, 7-3 - it was utterly fantastic. The Canucks (and their fans) weren't particularly happy about the refereeing... to the point where, in the third period, the Canucks took a bench penalty for "abuse of the officials", and when it was announced, the entire arena burst into applause and cheers. It was the funniest thing I've seen at a hockey game in a while. So that was awesome. After the game, we drove back home, but not before stopping at a grocery store to stock up on Canadian chocolate. Sora got a bunch of Aero bars, and I got enough Coffe Crisps to last me a few weeks. Yay!

Anyway, back to work tomorrow. It always feels weird after a weekend at a con... but then again, all of my weekends have been busy lately. Next weekend: gaming party, and then helping Sora move on Sunday!

YAY!!!Pity we won't be seeing you at Ad-Astra, but it's a moot point now anyways.-sigh- N'er mind the crap they did with me, they PROFESSIONALY screwed Mercy over... but that's a topic for another post.Glad you had such a kick-ass time at Sakura-Con!Keep it surreal!

I'd given some thought to it. Not sure I'm going to have sufficient time to make it worthwhile, though, what with doing the gaming party on Saturday and helping Sora move stuff on Sunday. That and my favorite webcomic's creator canceled, so I've not as much motivation.

I might drop in and check out Thur evening programming, but I won't need the room until Friday night (work y'know). Will you let the front desk know that I will be coming to check in and pick up my key card on Fri?

Eeee... :D I'm glad you had a good time, too, love. I thought it was all utterly fantastic. As I'll write up a post about as soon as I have ten minutes' breathing time all to m'self, lol.

Also -- heh, no, I've seen AMVs before. Not in a movie-theatre environment, and not so MANY, but I have. XD An AMV was my introduction to Evanescence, actually. Fabulous. This is it, but there are no links for it. Sigh. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Neat; so was mine! (Excepting all the times iris_of_ether discussed them in her LJ, that is, but it was my first exposure to their music.) The video that did it was the best Xenogears AMV I've ever seen, set to "My Immortal". So pretty, even if it is a RealMedia file. :D